John T. Jones has a joint appointment, working in the Plant Nematology group at The James Hutton Institute and as a Professor of Biology at the University of St Andrews.

Dr. Jones' primary research focus is on the isolation and functional characterisation of effectors of plant parasitic nematodes and understanding their roles in the host-parasite interaction. His team is particularly interested in nematode effectors that suppress host defences. Dr. Jones has been involved in genomics projects for a variety of plant parasitic nematodes and was one of the leaders of the Globodera pallida genome project. He uses RNAi, biochemical and cell biology tools to examine the function of nematode proteins. Dr. Jones and his colleagues are also interested in molecular host-parasite interactions in other plant parasitic nematodes and in the role of horizontal gene transfer in the evolution of plant parasitism.